The Dark Mark
by mutedmonologue
Summary: Severus Snape survives to know the days after Voldemort's downfall. Disillusioned, he attempts to continue on. He finds equal parts redemption and remorse in his love for a woman he hurt while under the Dark Lord's orders. Neither of them can forget.
1. Chapter 1

Pain erupted through his body in a blinding flash of light, but the only thing Severus Snape saw was the hatred in her eyes. He suspected that he had sustained a broken nose, or at least a couple of bruised rips, but he pushed this information to the back of his mind. There would be time for such trivialities later; now he must survey the damages. Severus didn't have to try to remember the crucial moment that had just passed; it was already seared into his memory. The muscles of her face were pulled taut in their fierce contortions, her expression was wild, but her eyes were clear and cold with purpose. She hadn't hesitated for a second.

As Severus's vision began to clear, his first impression was of bone—pure exposed white bone. Then he realized that it was her, unfathomably close—enough so that a single part of her body distorted to fill his entire field of vision. The gown she wore had fallen to one side, revealing one pale shoulder blade and its painfully prominent bones. She bent over him.

"Severus…" said his wife.

Her voice, raw with sleep, resounded with sorrow. She sounded like she was calling for someone she had lost.

"...Severus. I thought that you were someone else."

She didn't need to clarify what she meant. Severus had been watching her sleeping face when he reached across the bed to touch her. When her eyes snapped open, she hadn't reacted immediately. She had waited for the caul of the nightmare to dissolve, lashes fluttering fitfully. Her fingers had closed tightly around his wrist. Only then had her lucid gaze made contact with his face. That could be no question of it. She had seen _him_. She had seen him, and then the hatred had flared in her eyes, and then her curse had thrown him against the wall with unbearable force.

When she awoke, she wasn't seeing any nightmare figure; she was seeing him in Death Eater's robes. She was seeing him holding her head back, forcing down a draught that would paralyze her, healing her so that she could be broken again. This Snape had felt the play of every small, thrashing muscle in her throat against his hands as she retched and struggled. Even when she was completely incapacitated, her eyes had been eloquently alive. They had taught him the meaning of the paradox _living death_. They haunted Severus Snape to this day.

"That is… understandable," he said at last. The fault was all his. As a matter of necessity, there had to be certain agreements in this marriage, and the mutual understanding that they were never to sneak up on one another was one of them. There was never any way of knowing who would actually sneak up on them. Severus hadn't been able to help it this time, though. It would always worry him to see his wife unnaturally still.

He jumped when her cool hand cupped his cheek, cauterizing the wounds he had considered too insignificant to notice in comparison with the burn of her eyes. He knew that he deserved it. Experiencing a rush of remorse, Severus jerked away from her touch. She arched her eyebrows at him skeptically, pragmatically, as if demanding if he was really about to keep his face broken forever in the name of guilt. This was the Circe he knew, and her presence gave him enormous relief.

"Are you all right?" Circe asked him once she had finished. By way of response, he adjusted the fallen sleeve of her nightgown, trailing his fingers across her warm skin. Hands trembling slightly, he brushed a damp strand of hair away from her forehead and studied her face. She was still breathing rather harder than was normal.

"I'm fine," Circe assured him indignantly. "You know better than anyone that such things leave a mark."

Rather sternly, she caught him rubbing at his left forearm, a nervous habit of his. Circe hated it. She said that it looked like he was trying to erase himself. She brought his arm to her lips, and then she kissed the ugly crescent-shaped scar on the side of his neck.

Severus stiffened and then relaxed in the embrace. He worried about Circe's affection for his scars. Severus, for his part, loved her darkly circled eyes and still-emaciated face, but he thought she simply couldn't redeem that part of him. There must be a catch. Either that, or they would change her mind.

He drew her to his chest possessively. He gave her a long kiss that was meant for brooding. He broke away when he finally found the words for what he had been meaning to say to her.

Words evaded him again, so he slid his hand down her gown and held it on the slight curve of her stomach. Although it was not apparent yet, she was carrying their child.

"There is talk everywhere of namesakes," Severus began slowly. "Every young couple in the magical world seems to have named their unborn children in advance. After casualties of the war—often the ones that saved their own lives. Young Albuses and Alastairs abound. They appear to actually believe that they can resurrect the dead."

"They're young. They probably do," said Circe, unperturbed. She was tracing the scars on Severus's chest with her fingertips, the most apparent remnants of the day he had almost died.

Severus Snape had been very fortunate. Not only had he survived; he had continued on. He was married to a woman who was, according the stares they received in public, much too attractive for him to plausibly have. That was the look he received when with most woman, as a matter of fact. Even after recognition dawned, the strangers still regarded them with a subdued and resentful disapproval. This was how Severus Snape gauged his success. Despite his own good fortune, the attitude of the rebuilding wizarding community continued to disturb him.

"They're optimistic beyond all reasonable expectation."

Circe shook her head. "It's more than just optimism. It's mass hysterical amnesia," she reported calmly.

"Precisely," said Severus, in a rather harsh tone. "They're utterly oblivious."

"They haven't lived through two wars," said Circe. "They don't know. They believe what they need to believe. So they _can_ live."

"They're fools," said Severus softly, almost enviously.

Circe sighed deeply. "I know."

For a long time, Severus watched his wife sleep, peacefully as she ever did—peacefully as either of them ever did. Waking each other with their nightmares was a common occurrence. He thought with distracted melancholy of younger generations—of Harry and Ginny Potter—so healthy and untroubled. Seeing them in the aftermath, Severus had known that they would recover. They could begin again, unmarked, as the Snapes could not. They could forget.


	2. Chapter 2

The night was not over yet. Their nights were always longer than they seemed. Severus mumbled feverishly into the pillow, in the throes of his own nightmare.

_He was watching Albus Dumbledore fall from the astronomy tower. His progress was impossibly slow. He remained suspended in the air. Severus felt his descent in the pit of his stomach—the awareness that from henceforth, he would always hate this man as much as he did in the moment he had raised his wand and invoked hell in his name._

_Severus approached the body, crushed on the ground. Harry Potter wept over the old man. He looked up when Severus neared and pierced him through with his accusing green eyes. And then it was Lily Evans lying there at the foot of the astronomy tower, her red hair fanning out like fire. _

_The fire deepened in color and thickened in consistency. It was an aureole of blood around a gaunt female figure lying facedown. Severus recognized the dark mahogany shade of the hair, the birdlike shoulder blades, but he bent down and turned her over. He had to look at her. Circe stared up at him, bloody, bruised, and broken. Her eyes, though tormented, were searingly lucid. _

_The ground stretched between them, tearing Severus away from her. He was Tobias Snape, shouting at his prostrated wife. The bruise rising on her forehead was the same shade of purple-brown as Circe's eyes. _

_A small child cowered in the corner._

Hands seized him.

"Severus!"

Severus Snape started awake. Circe bent over him, unhurt and fuller in the face than the wasted Circe in his dream. She held him by the shoulders, from which he surmised that he had been thrashing in his sleep. He still shook uncontrollably.

Severus took several slow breaths and sat up, voice and manner emotionless.

"I have told you," he said, "never to wake me."

Circe fixed him with her most ironic stare. "And I have told you never to startle me, which as we now see, was for good reason."

"The dreams are my penance."

"Penance by way of complete self-destruction?" Circe arched an eyebrow. "Yes, that's certainly what thousands of people died for."

"Do not pretend for a moment that you do not understand—they did not _die for_ anything. They only _died_. They died in the process of revolution and left us to _live for_ the duration."

"That's semantic hogwash. Please stop attempting to misunderstand me. They died for you and not despite you or because of you. The impact of their sacrifice is irrelevant. It only matters that it was their intention. I know you, Severus. You enjoy suffering; it makes you feel better."

Severus stiffened angrily. "I do not _enjoy _suffering."

"Then why," said Circe softly, "did you fall in love with me?"

A wounded silence descended.

"You actually deign to ask me that," Severus demanded, breathless with fury. "Now I require a reason to love you?"

Circe's voice was calm. "You don't_ require _a reason, but you _have _several. And one of them is that it is the next-best way of being married to your guilt."

"Guilt does not make people fall in love."  
She smiled. "I never suggested that it did."

"And what of you?" Severus returned. "You love me because you cannot allow yourself, for a moment, to forget the past."

"Among other reasons," she said simply, without trying to deny it.

Her serene acceptance angered Severus.

"You're impossible," he said.

"You're almost too guilty to be alive."

"You're unduly morbid."

"You're afraid of your own happiness."

"I love you," Severus said fiercely, boldly, seizing both of her hands in his,

"And I you," said Circe, a surprised smile pulling at her lips. "And I stand corrected."

She was wrong, of course. A mastered fear was still a fear.


	3. Chapter 3

When the nausea came over her, Circe was almost relieved to abandon all pretense of sleep. It was only an hour or two since she'd last been awakened by her husband. After the by-now familiar episode, Severus immediately fell back to sleep in an oddly dutiful posture, possessed by what he clearly saw as a moral obligation to continue his nightmare where it had left off. For her part, Circe did not try. She just laid back with her eyes open and listened to him.

This exercise was, in itself, enough to keep her awake. Severus's sleep breathing was heavy and even, but it had an unsettling rapidity of tempo that resembled hyperventilating more than anything. With a regularity that had the strange capacity to startle her each time, it was punctuated with grunts and gasps, stops and starts, and odd strangled noises. They sounded like screams with lockjaw to Circe, who would know something about that. It was as if the subconscious force that took over Severus's body while he slept shared his personality. In some corner of his mind, there was always a Severus Snape with his eyes wide-open. And this self-conscious agent was keeping Severus's mouth shut for his own protection.

It endeared him to Circe, but it also made her deeply sad for him. Every time she touched him, she half-worried that she had dislodged a scream somewhere within him. She pictured it rebounding back and forth against the frame of his bones, eventually landing somewhere beneath his tongue, where he caught it and held it—his expression severe and pained as he struggled to keep it there. He let go at the stupidest provocations, but Circe knew that was what he needed to do. Accepting his intermittent bouts of austerity and turbulence was part of loving him.

The rising sun peeked through the curtain, illuminating falling dust particles in the air. Severus snorted loudly in his sleep and then swallowed, reclaiming the outburst. And Circe felt the first waves of morning sickness, extricated herself from his arms, and rose from the bed.

On the cold tile floor, Circe folded into herself—thighs tucked into her chest, elbows on top of her knees, chin resting on her wrist. The fact that this position was still comfortable worried her. She'd been trying to gain weight for the baby, with mixed results. The pregnancy itself was counterproductive to her attempts to gain weight for the sake of the pregnancy. Circe knew she wouldn't be able keep down at least half of what she ate, in a peculiar Zeno's paradox of digestion. For some unfathomable reason, thinking about it in these coolly academic terms set her off. Once again, Circe retched.

"My dear?" Severus's deep, sleep-suffused voice preceded him into the room. Circe inwardly cursed the perpetually vigilant internal Severus, who kept an ear open as well, it appeared. His dark eyes swept the scene, noted the significance of her posture with concern. They lingered on the protuberant bones of her wrists. His face took rapid corrective action when he saw hers. Circe was aware of the fragility of her current appearance, but that did not mean she enjoyed being reminded of it.

"Again?" Severus said—simply, groggily, eloquently.

"Congratulations. It's an honorably intentioned self-saboteur, just like his father," said Circe, rather wearily, lifting her head. "And at such a precocious stage, as well."

Severus didn't smile. He looked almost feral in his protectiveness.

"Did you eat?"

There was a pause as a fresh wave of nausea engulfed her.

"Apparently."

Circe wiped at her mouth and came to stand beside him in the doorway. He placed a hand on the small of her back.

"Come. I am taking you to St. Mungo's. Now."

Circe moved away, leaving his hand dangling in the air. "They will just tell us what we already know. The nausea is normal. There is nothing more that _either of us_ can do." She put a meaningful emphasis on the words.

"This is my fault."

Circe sighed softly. The released breath caressed Severus's cheek, foreshadowing her hand. It was touchingly clammy. Circe tilted his chin down gently, holding his gaze with hers. Those disconcerting bruise-colored eyes were tender.

"Severus, you know that you spared me from more than you ever subjected me to." Her voice was almost stripped of all irony, so soft it was nearly inaudible. "Whenever you could, you risked your_ life_ to save me from _pain_, you _fool,_" she added, her face twisting into an indecipherable combination of love, sarcasm, and sorrow. "Don't think for a moment that I don't know that."

Severus stayed completely still, unwilling to break their closeness. They looked at each other in silence, foreheads almost touching, exchanging breath. A convulsion passed over Severus's face and settled into expressionlessness.

"I am completely undeserving of your gratitude," he said at last.

"Then let's not call it gratitude."

"Stop interrupting me. I risked my life for trivialities. I could have done the same to save you from everything."

"And then," said Circe, "we would both be dead."

Severus couldn't help but smile slightly at her lethal pragmatism.

"You know that's not what I meant," she continued, her self-deprecating little grin echoing his own. "You shouldn't have risked at all. It was too dangerous. Any more feckless heroism on your part—"

Severus actually laughed—one abrupt, staccato note. "I am no longer concerned about your gratitude."

Circe ignored him. "—would certainly have killed us—well, all three of us," she corrected, giving her stomach an intimate touch.

Severus's smile faded. "I need to take you to see the doctor."

Circe shook her head with a long-suffering exasperation. "If we keep up the way we've been going, when I'm actually in labor, they won't believe us. They'll just prepare the same reassuring platitudes in advance and send us home."

"I don't care that this doesn't worry you," Severus said forcefully, almost snarling. "It concerns me, and I need to know that you are all right."

Circe stiffened and regarded him with something like disgust. "Your guilt does not give you the right to force me."

A tense ringing silence filled the room.

Circe noticed and switched to the gentler, more evasive accusations of ridicule. "Believing that you're responsible for everything—it's a sort of egotism, you know that. Not everything is about you, Severus. Especially not me."

"Don't you mock me!" he thundered. Furious, Severus seized his wife roughly by both shoulders. Her eyes went impossibly wide, swallowed by their whites. In that moment, she was afraid of him. Guilt engulfed him, but it was out of sync with his body. His fingers took an impossibly long time to respond to his emotion and loosen themselves. "Why must you mock the fact that I care about you?" he said much more softly, penitently, as if trying to overwrite the previous action.

"Entirely selfish reasons, I'm sure." Circe's voice sounded like it had a puncture in it. The hand behind her back gripped the doorframe where she didn't think he could see. She took a moment to recover before continuing. She placed her hands on his shoulders, turning his harsh grasp into an embrace. She pressed her body against him, fitting gaunt curve into gaunt plane. Her grin was ripely sardonic. "It could just be that I find your outrage extremely attractive."

Severus looked as if he was prepared to become angry again, but his body responded to her touch before he could. Taking notice, Circe laughed her prolonged throaty laugh. There were pieces of hair sticking to her forehead and her cheeks were flushed. She exuded a scent that was both human and animal—something like sweat, like salt and talcum.

Both equally unable to let go of the other, they staggered into the bedroom in a tightly partnered dance—a tango perhaps. Severus wasn't about to let her get off that easily, evade his question so cheaply, but they were moving like people in a three-legged race now, and his resistance would make them both fall. Besides, he couldn't risk further argument. His anger was its own being, and it had frightened him. He had forced it to recede back into him, like many a secret thought, back into hiding, dormant.

Their passion bordered on anger, negated nothing, and confirmed everything.

* * *

Circe lingered briefly in the bedroom while Severus prepared himself for work. She wouldn't need to leave for the Ministry until later, but the waiting irritated her. She picked at a spot on her ankle, got up, paced the room. In the periphery of her vision, a black cloak billowed in the air. Circe whirled around.

"_Expecto Patronum_!"

Severus rushed into the room, wand raised.

"What happened?"

"Dementor," Circe told him. "At the window."

Severus exhaled shallowly and relaxed his tensed wand arm. Dementors were relatively common visitors. The Ministry still hadn't regained control over the dark creatures, and they seemed to gravitate to the Snapes.

Severus paused for a moment to watch Circe's Patronus with tight-lipped affection. The silvery hawk circled vigilantly over their heads. Circe didn't tell him that there had been no Dementor—just a curtain blowing in a draft. She didn't want him to know how tense she was. He would worry, and she would overcompensate by searching for potential threats before reacting to them. For a while, she thought, it was in their best interest to continue to jump at small noises.


End file.
